Threat Seen In `Set-aside' Ruling

May 14, 1992|By MATTHEW KAUFFMAN; Courant Staff Writer

NEW HAVEN — The steel beams that gird the J.T. Carr Bridge in New Haven were put there by Joslyn Chance's small contracting firm, but Chance believes he never would have gotten the job without a city law that guaranteed some of the bridge work for minority companies.

And now that a federal judge has struck down New Haven's "set-aside" law, Chance believes his Bloomfield company, and others like it, are heading for very difficult times.

"We'll never get any work," Chance said Wednesday. "In New Haven, without that program -- and the New Haven program is a good program, it's probably the best program in the whole state -- without that, we won't get any work at all."

Chance is one of a number of minority contractors fearful that U.S. District Judge Peter C. Dorsey's May 4 decision will threaten the survival of their businesses. But a leader of the group that challenged New Haven's law said competent business people of all colors have nothing to worry about.

"I have a sense that you're probably not going to see that much of a difference" in the amount of work given to minority contractors, said John Farnham, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Connecticut.

The 120-member group sued the city in 1989, after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling striking down a set-aside program in Richmond, Va. The high court invalidated the Richmond law partly because it was enacted in response to discrimination in society rather than proven discrimination in the local construction industry.

Dorsey ruled that New Haven officials also had failed to present clear evidence of discrimination in the local construction industry.

Hartford, Bridgeport and the state also have set-aside laws. Farnham said the association has no plans to challenge those laws and is hoping the state, which conducted hearings on discrimination earlier this year, comes out against the legality of set-aside programs.

The New Haven law, which applies to city contracts of $100,000 or more, requires contractors to award at least 10 percent of the

work to minority-owned businesses and at least 4 percent to businesses owned by women. New Haven's set-aside law is considered the strongest in the state and has meant tens of millions of dollars annually for businesses owned by minority group members and women.

But the contractors association argued that New Haven's law was discriminatory and pushed up the cost of some construction jobs by forcing contractors to hire women- and minority-owned firms even if they were not the low bidders. Without the law, all subcontractors would have an equal opportunity to compete for and win contracts, Farnham said.

"Price and product in the marketplace are everything," he said. Contractors "are colorblind and they are gender-blind. What they are interested in is the best product at the lowest price."

Chance said the construction business is more complicated than that.

"It's who you know or who knows you," he said. "I'm putting in bids that I know are better, but someone knows someone and they go through the back door. It's the good old boy network."

Bruce Morris, a black electrician who owns Mor-Fam Electric in New Haven, said black people trying to break into construction have a particularly tough time, and white people are more likely to be accepted by established companies.

"They say, `Oh, this is Johnny's kid, this is Sal's kid.' They had more of an opportunity," Morris said. "People do business with people they like and people they're comfortable with."

Mayor John C. Daniels, who proposed the set-aside program as an alderman in the mid-1970s -- and whose plumbing company has benefited from the law -- is expected to announce today how the city plans to respond to the ruling.

Morris, who said his business would not have succeeded without the set-aside law, said he was disturbed that the ruling comes at a time when racial tension is so high in the country and at a time when there is much talk about the importance of job opportunities for urban youths.

"The law provides the opportunity. A minority contractor has to prove himself once he gets the opportunity, but this law provides the opportunity," Morris said. "You take away the opportunities for the black community, what do you have left?"